A 34-year old Tennessee native who never played basketball in high school in Nashville or in college at Clemson, who has never recruited on a Power 5 Conference level and who has never stayed more than two seasons in his two college head coaching stops.

Is Virginia Commonwealth University coach Will Wade worth the reported six-year, $12 million contract offered by LSU athletic director Joe Alleva to become the Tigers' 22nd men's hoops coach in history?

Wade should hold that $2 million per year value if you judge him on winning 70 percent of his games as a head coach, on 51 wins and two NCAA tournament berths in his two years as head coach at VCU, on VCU athletic director Ed McLaughlin's description of him as an "old soul who looks 17, but thinks and acts 47," on his aggressive offense and pressure defense and on his passion and preparation so thorough he keeps index cards in a back pocket that detail plays for half- and game-ending situations.

There were certainly more experienced candidates for the LSU vacancy created when fifth-year coach Johnny Jones was fired March 10 following one of the most inept seasons in school history. It was a year punctuated by a school-record 15 straight losses, a 2-16 regular season SEC record and four defeats by 30 points or more.

Freshly fired ninth-year Indiana coach Tom Crean, a year removed from a 27-win season and a Big Ten regular season championship, supposedly used a third party to contact LSU to gauge interest.

Middle Tennessee coach Kermit Davis, a former LSU assistant who has won 24 or more games five of the last six seasons, earning NCAA tournament berths three of the past five years, undoubtedly would have liked a return to Baton Rouge sitting in the boss seat.

Nevada second-year coach and former LSU assistant Eric Musselman, who spent 18 years on pro staffs, including nine in the NBA where he was a head coach for three seasons, had the most experience on the highest level of hoops of any candidate.

The one thing Crean, Davis and Musselman all have in common is they are 50 years or older.

Wade, who's so young he looks as if he could have been Bobby Brady's friend on "The Brady Bunch," was mistaken as a VCU player by a charter bus driver driving the team at last year's NCAA tournament.

Apparently, Alleva wanted to go the "young blood" hiring route, which has had mixed results the last few decades in the SEC.

Billy Donovan had just two years of head coaching experience when Florida hired him at age 30. By his fourth of 19th seasons in Gainesville en route to becoming the second-winningest coach in SEC history, he had the Gators in the national championship game. He eventually made three more Final Four trips, winning back-to-back national titles in 2006 and 2007.

Darrin Horn was 35 years old with one NCAA tournament berth in five seasons at Western Kentucky when South Carolina hired him in 2008. After a 21-win season in his first season with the Gamecocks, three straight years of losing records got him fired.

Wade is the fourth VCU coach in the last 11 seasons to accept a Power 5 Conference head coach spot.

“He has not signed, and due to NCAA rules, LSU can’t make any comment on the matter.”

Bigby-Williams announced his intention to transfer to LSU from Oregon earlier this week. LSU does not have a scholarship open, though that will change if center Elbert Robinson’s departure from the team for medical reasons is approved for a waiver by the NCAA.

Eugene (Ore.) Daily Emerald broke the story of the investigation on Wednesday night. Bigby-Williams played the entire 2016-17 season for the Ducks.

The alleged assault occurred between 10 p.m. on Sept. 17, 2016, and 3 a.m. on Sept. 18, 2016, at Gillette College in northern Wyoming, according to the report. Bigby-Williams played basketball at Gillette before he transferred to Oregon.

The Northern Wyoming Community College District campus police has been investigating Bigby-Williams since Sept. 19, 2016. That department informed the University of Oregon police department of the investigation on Sept. 28.

Altman has come under fire before because three Ducks played while being investigated for an alleged rape in 2014.

Will Wade didn’t have to go looking for a plan on how to rebuild the LSU men’s basketball team when he accepted the job March 20, just 12 days after one of the school's worst seasons in a half-century.

Even at 34, with a résumé that included four seasons as a Division I head coach, the boyish-looking Wade had already been there and done that.

Twice.

Only six of the 13 players on scholarship at the start of the 2016-17 season remained on the roster Friday: guards Brandon Sampson, Skylar Mays and Jalyn Patterson, and forwards Wayde Sims, Aaron Epps and Duop Reath.

Of that group, Blakeney declared for the NBA draft but was not selected, Victor was dismissed from the team in December (by Jones), Bridgewater and Eddlestone exhausted their eligibility and Robinson couldn’t continue his career because of medical issues.

“There were obviously some problems we needed to address and fix,” Wade said. “You start looking at where those issues are, and you try to go get the best guys that you can to fill those voids. It’s our job to put a good team on the floor as quickly as possible.”

For the tireless 34-year-old Wade, who directed a massive roster overhaul in addition to building a staff and recruiting, there were on-court sessions in the summer as well as strength and conditioning drills when the fall semester got under way in August.

On Friday, Wade’s team enters a new and critical phase of his rebuilding job: Six weeks of preseason practice that will take the Tigers up to their Nov. 10 season opener with Alcorn State.

Wade can practice his team on 30 of those 42 days to prepare for the season. Included in the important six-week stretch are two closed-door scrimmages against other universities, rather than just one scrimmage and an exhibition game.

“The team is a work in progress,” Wade said Monday afternoon during a news conference previewing the start of practice. “There’s a lot of work to do when we get started with practice Friday.

“We’ve got a lot of work, a lot of things to clean up,” he said. “I do think we’ll be tougher, we’ll be a lot grittier. We’re excited to get going on Friday and get out of a developmental stage and more in a team stage.”

LSU went 2-16 in Southeastern Conference play and had a school-record 15-game losing streak.

“We’re making progress,” Wade said. “If you don’t pass this (boot camp), you don’t practice and you’re not going to play for us. We did our first one this morning and it went well.”

The only players that didn’t participate in the boot camp and won’t be available for Friday’s practice are forwards Jeremy Combs [injured], a graduate transfer from North Texas, and Galen Alexander.

“Yuck. Three days of hell, man,” Sampson said. “It’s most definitely the hardest thing I ever did in my life.But I’m glad I have the chance to sit here and say I got through it.”

Before beginning practice last week, new LSU men’s basketball coach Will Wade worked his players through a ringer of conditioning tests he calls “boot camp,” pushing the team to its physical and mental limits. The rules were simple: If you don’t pass boot camp, you don’t get to practice. If you don’t practice, you don’t play.

Luckily for LSU’s depth, everyone who was healthy enough to participate in boot camp passed. Which, if anything, is more of a commentary on the rigorous training program Wade put his players through over the summer than it is on the natural fitness of the team.

When you ask one of Wade’s players to describe their coach in a word, every last one of them will say “detailed.” From stressing exactly where to line your heels up against the 3-point line when setting a screen to following through a motion on the backside of an offensive set, Wade’s schemes reflect his detail-oriented persona. His off-the-court emphases are equally detailed too.

One of Wade’s priorities upon arriving in Baton Rouge was body transformation. He wanted to get his players in the right shape. Guys like Sampson and forward Duop Reath packed on weight, strengthening their presences in the paint. Others such as sophomore guard Skylar Mays lost weight, slimming down to more effectively get up and down the court.

A week out from a Halloween night exhibition game at Tulane, Wade’s job has largely centered around selling. Selling recruits on a program that hasn’t existed at LSU for a long time. Selling fans on supporting a program whose popularity at LSU currently ranks behind football, baseball, gymnastics and probably softball.

The recruits have bought in. After arriving in March from VCU, Wade held together and enhanced a five-man signing class rated a respectable 16th nationally in 247Sports’ composite rankings. Coupled with what LSU has coming back, Wade sounds like he has the start of something good.

“Our 1 through 5 may not wow you,” he said, “but our 1 through 12 is not bad.”

In a tightly played contest in which neither team had more than a 5-point lead, LSU came up with three defensive stops in the final minute to secure a 64-63 victory over Missouri in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

In addition to the three defensive stops, two of them coming in the final 5.2 seconds, Tremont Waters hit what turned out to be the game-winning basket on a banker with 19.8 seconds left.

Robertson, Mizzou’s leading scorer at 16.6 points a game, had a shot, but his attempt from close range was contested by Edwards and failed to find the mark. Cullen VanLeer’s attempted tip-in bit the underside of the rim as the horn sounded.